After all, in every other topic about a new stadium, you always say "This future X stadium looks like (already existing) Y stadium".

Personally, I don't care if a stadium looks like one another. If you built your stadium after an already existing superb stadium plan, it's ok with me because you'll have something very good in the end. that's perhaps you're surely right Axelferis : Everybody wants to be original but the final goal is to end up with a great stadium.

Imagine France need a 90.000 stadium and built a copycat of Wembley.
everybody will say that this is INDEED a Wembley-bis and will blame us for that..
But after all, if you paid the architect who designed wembley, he will not complain.
The bottom line is that you'll end up with a stadium everybody is happy with it.

A final note for people who are not french :
I took Wembley as an exemple. For me Wembley is far for being the best stadium in the world, better ones are stade de France, Nou camp, Reliant stadium and Allianz arena among others.

Of course they deserve such a stadium.
For the retractable roof, I've mixed feeling. Does the missing degrees for 3/4 games a year are really worth the price of a retractable roof? Bollaert attendance depends of the opponent team, not the weather. Lens fans have a lion's heart.

Of course they deserve such a stadium.
For the retractable roof, I've mixed feeling. Does the missing degrees for 3/4 games a year are really worth the price of a retractable roof? Bollaert attendance depends of the opponent team, not the weather. Lens fans have a lion's heart.

I agree with you, there's no real need of retractable roof for bollaert but as someone said, things are not fixed.
An expansion will take place, for sure, but we don't know yet, despite the preliminary renders, what exactly will happen except from the capacity entering the 50k seats level.

In the future of this stadium I see less trees, less parking and a lot more dust and noise for the greater good. But why oh why nobody saw that the stadium was way to close to the road! they could have moved the stadium back to the centre of the lot!

My guess is that when they first built the stadium, the stand most likely weren't large enough to be influenced by the railway tracks. When the stadium later was enlargened, it came into contact with the tracks.

i got this pictures form the lens official web site. it show the location of the felix bollaert at 1934. the railway was already there before the staium was constructed

[IMG]http://i27.************/29o5oog.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i32.************/4gjg9f.jpg[/IMG]

as i dont speak french i dont really know what it says but for some picures i believe the stadium had first an oval shape, that changed due to the renovations for the 1977 uefa cup partisipation, the 1984 bid for the eurocup and the 1998 world cup.